Fathers and Children, arguably the first modern novel in the history of Russian literature, shocked readers when it was first published in 1862 - the controversial character of Bazarov, a self-proclaimed nihilist intent on rejecting all existing traditional values and institutions, providing a trenchant critique of the established order.

Turgenev's masterpiece investigates the growing nihilist movement of mid-nineteenth-century Russia - a theme which was to influence Dostoevsky and many other European writers - in a universal and often hilarious story of generational conflict and the...